I spoke too soon — most of my data was lost

I got my hard drive back today … and my initial fears were founded: I’ve lost everything. I lost my two key partitions: My Documents and Install. I feel empty, sad and angry at myself for not backing these up.

I now have the long, lonely task of trying to start again. First up I need to backup what I do have left (very little, but amongst it is my clipart). Then format the drive and start over.

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Gareth Saunders

I’m Gareth J M Saunders, 46 years old, 6′ 4″, father of 3 boys (including twins).
Latterly, web architect and agile project manager at the University of St Andrews and warden at Agnes Blackadder Hall. Currently on sabbatical.
I am a priest in the Scottish Episcopal Church, and I sing with the NYCGB alumni choir.
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What a disaster. Job’s comforter- your readers will be learning from what has happened – I’m backing up right now. How much did they charge you for not recovering what you need, especially when they got your hopes up?

So very annoying. I do sympathise. It doesn’t help, but I can tell you I lost all of my 2004 photos (holidays et al) down to the activities of a computer virus. If I’d backed-up more often they would have been safe… And as we all say after the event… “If only..” Take heart. My added advice would be *not* to use that HD again. It may be faulty…

It cost me Â£120 to get my Windows partition and graphics files back. The two partitions that I really needed were My Documents (last backup March 2003) and Install (last backup August 2003)!!

I’ve just installed File Scavenger which can see the My Documents and Install file names, but the actual files are corrupt. I’m currently writing out, by hand, the list of all that was on those partitions, to see what I need to track down.